The Phoenix Guards (Tor Fantasy)

A young Dragaeran swordsman sets out to join the Empire's elite Phoenix Guards

Brust's ( Phoenix ) latest does not involve the hero of his ongoing Vlad Taltos series, but it is set in the same world, Dragaera, 1000 years earlier, and shares the wit and exhuberance of the Taltos books. Khaavren, a young swordsman, sets out to join the Imperial Guards under the recently ascended Phoenix Emperor. On the way to the capital, he falls in with three other aspiring Guards, and they form an inseparable quartet of flashing blades and impeccable manners. Unwittingly, Khaavren and company are soon enmeshed in secret plots reaching from the Imperial Palace to the far borders of the empire, with only their skill, wits and blind luck to see them through. In self-conscious homage to the works of Alexandre Dumas and Raphael Sabatini, Brust blends snappy, playful dialogue with circuitous narrative passages. Although the plot's naked contrivance verges on parody, Khaavren and his friends are charming, albeit shallow, heroes whose adventure should win Brust more readers, if his adopted style does not throw them off.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Fantasy set on the world Dragaera (like Brust's paperback ``Vlad Taltos'' yarns), consciously modeled on Dumas, Sabatini, et al., complete with an irritatingly intrusive author, thudding bodies on every page, and chunks of impenetrable description like those William Goldman happily omitted from The Princess Bride. Four young noble warriors--Khaavren, Aerich, Tazendra, Pel- -meet and, united in their resolve to join the Emperor's elite Guards, become fast friends. In a plot of inordinate convolutions, including a surprise addendum where they are faced with summary execution, the swashbuckling quartet becomes involved in an attempt to overthrow the weak but good-hearted Emperor, though they are never sure whose side they or anyone else is on. The Dumas imitation isn't nearly as appealing as Brust seems to think: where light brushstrokes are required, he lays it on with a trowel. Still, the dialogue is snappy and amusing, the scenario holds many attractions (a preponderance of sword over sorcery; warriors are female as often as male, and attack the opposite sex without a qualm; the survivors live for thousands of years), and a certain charm shines through despite Brust's efforts to pretend that he's really someone else. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.